Resources/community building

1. Our Blocks is a website with many resources on community building.

2. The Useful Community Development website also looks to be quite interesting and an important resource to help people and neighborhoods and community organizations make the jump to broad ranging community development planning, rather than the more narrow focus that much of the field has had, at least within the incarnation of urban renewal oriented community redevelopment corporations.

Both of these resources will prove important and useful to many.

3. Yesterday featured "mobs" in DC protesting against a lot of things. See the AP story "Thousands of downtown D.C. protesters blast Obama." (Sadly I accidentally put my camera on a setting that seemingly made the camera blank, and it took me a couple hours to realize what I did, therefore I missed a lot of great photo opportunities, such as people holding protest signs in pedicabs, etc.)

Protesters against US President Barack Obama's health care plan and other policies gather in Washington, DC. Tens of thousands of people have marched from the shadow of the White House to the footsteps of the US Capitol to protest against Obama and what they claim to be his "big government" policies. (AFP/Nicholas Kamm)

But there is a new "MOB" effort in Oakland, California, called "Make Oakland Better Now." See "The story behind Make Oakland Better Now" from a San Francisco Chronicle blog. Read the full story "Make Oakland Better Now! – Secrets Revealed."


4. There is a chilling op-ed piece by Tom Friedman in the New York Times, "Our One-Party Democracy," about how authoritarianism might be better than democracy when it comes to making hard choices. It's funny, because the first upper level political science course I ever took in college was on "Political Development and Democracy," taught by Peter McDonough, who studied and wrote about Brazil. It was a great course.

His writings on this question in Brazil concerned two axes, order vs. equity; and efficiency vs. something that I can't remember (it's been almost 30 years...) but is probably participation.

Democracy makes it very hard to make hard choices, when the system favors special interests (see Michels classic Political Parties, about oligarchical organizations), and the special interests are all about their own concerns and preferences, rather than having what we might call a more "generativity-based" perspective.

The idea of generativity comes from Erik Erikson and his work on the life cycle. From The Developmental Stages of Erik Erikson:

Middle Adulthood: 35 to 55 or 65
Ego Development Outcome: Generativity vs. Self absorption or Stagnation
Basic Strengths: Production and Care

Now work is most crucial. Erikson observed that middle-age is when we tend to be occupied with creative and meaningful work and with issues surrounding our family. Also, middle adulthood is when we can expect to "be in charge," the role we've longer envied.

The significant task is to perpetuate culture and transmit values of the culture through the family (taming the kids) and working to establish a stable environment. Strength comes through care of others and production of something that contributes to the betterment of society, which Erikson calls generativity, so when we're in this stage we often fear inactivity and meaninglessness.

As our children leave home, or our relationships or goals change, we may be faced with major life changes—the mid-life crisis—and struggle with finding new meanings and purposes. If we don't get through this stage successfully, we can become self-absorbed and stagnate.

Significant relationships are within the workplace, the community and the family.

If people can't commit to issues and concerns outside of themselves, then authoritarianism impulses come forward to make the hard choices. However, since the people with the best access to political and economic elites are those who benefit from stasis--maintaining the way things are already--maybe authoritarianism doesn't work so well after all.

A couple years ago there was a piece in the New York Times Magazine about Curitiba, "Recycle City - The Road to Curitiba," about the urban redesign "miracle" there. Interestingly, one of the criticisms is that Mayor Jaime Lerner was able to do what he did because the country was under authoritarian rule. From the article:

The progressive urban planning of Curitiba was not initiated by a democratic process; it was set in motion by the military dictatorship that seized power in 1964 and ruled Brazil until the mid-’80s. Its environmentalism is rooted in authoritarianism. “They didn’t have to confront the public through public participation, and the decisions could be made by urban planners — architects acting as politicians,” says Clara Irazábal, who has written a book comparing the urban planning experiences of Curitiba and Portland, Ore. The city that has been called the most forward-looking in the Western Hemisphere is an outgrowth of an era that many Brazilians prefer not to look back on. Jaime Lerner, the archangel of the Curitiba green movement, was anointed by the dragons of war.

The Post a week or two ago had a review, "How to Get Rich the Asian Way" of Michael Schuman's new book, THE MIRACLE: The Epic Story Of Asia's Quest For Wealth, about how great the Asian economies are. I found the review wanting and was left with the sense that both Schuman and the reviewer need to learn a lot more about stages of political development and national economic development. It's easy to say that Asian economies are great today and wonder why the U.S. is declining because they are comparing economies at different stages of development, without realizing it.

Remember that the prevailing theory in urban sociology was that urban neighborhoods were born, grew, declined, and died. They didn't see the potential for rebirth that we have been experiencing for the last couple decades. (See the Brookings report "Who Lives Downtown?")

The question is whether or not the U.S. will continue to decline, as the creation of a "more equal" global economy where the U.S. is no longer pre-eminent and dominant, and where manufacturing is more globally distributed, continues apace.